The Armchair
09-24-2005, 12:37 PM
You are in a large room -- a gymnasium, perhaps, but there are no basketball hoops, no bleachers, no scoreboard; in fact, the room is entirely empty.
Oh, and the walls are actually not walls, but huge towers of fire. There seems to be no way out, and walking through the fire walls doesn't seem like a good idea.
Before you can figure out exactly how you got to where you are, or why you are there, or why you are still reading this post, a loud voice booms over an invisible PA system. In its best Mortal Kombat tone, the voice simply exclaims
FIGHT!
You have nothing to fight, and seem disappointed.
Your disappointment is brief.
Behind you appear twenty-seven kindergartners. They are playing patty-cake, red rover, and duck-duck-goose. They are all wearing Yankees jerseys, except for one who is wearing a Tampa Bay Devil Rays jersey. That one is winning a disproportional number of games, not that you think it matters.
Suddenly, a child playing Red Rover slips and falls into the fiery wall -- and bounces off, unscathed. She then goes back to playing. (Naturally, having failed to break through the opposing team's chain, she now is part of that team, but that is neither here nor there.)
You stand, staring at the twenty-seven children, partially wondering where they came from, partially wondering where you came from, partially wondering why you are wondering where they came from instead of focusing more on where you came from, and entirely ignoring the fact that some voice from up on high just commanded someone, potentially you, to fight. Thankfully (perhaps), the voice reminds you:
FIGHT!
A plurality of you opted to attack the children.
You charge at the first child in the patty-cake game and drop kick him in the chest. He passes out and disappears, but other than that, the kids seem not to notice your presence.
One by one, you pick off the children, until only nine remain. They, naturally, are the ones playing Red Rover. Six on one side, three on the other.
You run as fast as you can at the two littlest girls (bastard!) on the far end of the non-gymnasium. They’re at the center of the team of six.
As you charge full speed, Sally, the little girl on the left – that is your left, not hers, although I never understood how she can be on her own left, is that not odd? – wets herself. And boy, can she pee. She’s pissing as much as that guy does in the joke Quentin Tarantino tells in Desperado.
What, you haven’t seen the movie?
Dude.
Unacceptable.
Anyway, it’s a whole lot of piss. So much piss, that you slip and stumble harmlessly toward Sally and Esmeralda (the other little girl, the one on your right and Sally’s left), only to be caught by their tiny little arms. Pussy.
Their hands separate and an irresistible force sticks you between them, reforming the chain. Well, if you are going to be coerced into playing Red Rover, at least you are on the winning team.
The team confers on whom next to send over. Across the battle field stand three kindergarteners:
Billy, a three foot, two inch kid with one hand and a hook for the other, and an eye patch over his left (your right) eye;
Benny, the kid who is wearing that Tampa Bay Devil Rays jersey and bounced off the wall of fire;
Jason G., a 6’3”, 240 pound guy who is clearly on steroids, and is probably too old to be in kindergarten any more.
WHO DO YOU SEND OVER?
By a slight margin, Billy the Hook was sent over.
Billy, replete with eye patch and hook hand, charges at you with the fervor of red ruffed lemur who had hepped up Red Bull.
For those of you who do not know what a red ruffed lemur looks like, it is highly suggested that you look at a picture of one, if for no other reason than to appreciate just how ferocious the thought of one such creature on gallons of Red Bull may appear. They certainly will weeble. They potentially will wobble. And you know, they just may fall down.
Billy does, indeed, weeble. And, having lost a good deal of depth perception due to the eye patch, he tends to wobble quite a bit. But falling down is not on the agenda, no sir! Billy spins stumbles flips falls (no, wait, he does not fall, sorry) sail slides stooks and friggles all the way from his team’s chain to yours, giggling, sniggering, and frothing all the way.
When this whirling dervish finally does reach your team’s chain, the worst thing happens. Sally, who clearly has a schoolgirl crush on Billy the pseudopirate, inexplicably – well, it is not inexplicable, not at all, given that it was just explained, but from your point of view, suffice it to say that it was so unexpected that it was for all intents and purposes inexplicable –
Sally inexplicably (see above) lets go of your hand and tackles Billy. It was probably intended a hug, but Sally fails in execution.
Billy, with Sally now draped around his waste, is moving slowly and, yes, still wobbling. However, he has one distinct advantage – you are no longer holding Sally’s hand, leaving a huge, gaping hole in your team’s Red Rover chain.
Across the abyss is Tyler, yet another five year old. Given how slowly Billy is moving -- Sally is tubby for a kindergartener – you have time to grab Tyler’s hand and reform the chain, if you act quickly. However, Tyler’s hands seem to have some gangrenous growth all over them, which only partially explains his balding purple hair and third eye. (He claims it is a bad case of the cooties, but Esmeralda – who is still holding your other hand – refuses to further break the Red Rover chain in order to give you a cooties shot.)
This leaves you with three clear choices:
1) Grab Tyler’s hand, reforming the chain and almost certainly stopping the Billy-Sally juggernaut from breaking though;
2) Let go of Esmeralda’s hand and attempt to beat up Billy, potentially saving your Red Rover team from defeat; or
3) As a pretext, hem and haw over what to do next, all the time intentionally allowing Billy to pass unscathed through the gap caused by Sally’s amour.
Amazingly, you chose #2.
You let go of Esmeralda’s hand and step forward, arms raised (well, lowered, as Billy is only 3’2”, but you get the point), ready to open up a can of whoopass.
Esmeralda is not pleased. Stopping Billy from breaking the Red Rover chain would have been easy, especially with Sally wrapped tightly around Billy’s waist. But now it is simply impossible – you have left too large a gap for Esmeralda and Tyler to close. Esmeralda jumps up, screams something in French Pig Latin (basically, it’s French, but Pig Latin-ized), and you are suddenly not very popular.
Turn to Page 7.
(Given that this is on a message board, you will note that turning to page 7 is rather difficult – after all, there is no page 7. It is suggested that you ignore this line, but in case you are highly curious, there is this parenthetical. This reference to turn to page 7 is to inform you, and to signal to your friendly neighborhood Choose Your OOT Adventure author, that the next few paragraphs can be reached via at least one other avenue. The other avenue does not have the page number labeled as to not ruin the story line, which was always a great downfall of the actual books. One could very easy read a good story about a fire-breathing dragon, get to the end, and see that two of the three choices send the reader to a page read on a previous read. That, being dumb, is best to be avoided, so this will occur only when necessary.
Thanks, and have a nice day.)
The children attack you – and they are armed with trout. The trout have no teeth. And they’re dead. (The trout, not the children.) The trout do smell rather awful, but they are slippery and the children are not doing such a good job wielding them. It could be worse.
Oh wait, it is.
Seems you have miscalculated. There were not twenty-seven children – there were 45,321, give or take six. Where did they come from? Well, that patty-cake, red rover, duck-duck-goose game? A magic summoning spell.
Where the trout came from is still unknown, and almost certainly irrelevant, although one never knows.
You, not being David Sklansky (who is said to be “surprisngly [sic] strong”) (see http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=3418712&page=1&view=c ollapsed&sb=5&o=14&vc=1 n.3), are overwhelmed by the somewhere between forty five thousand, three hundred fifteen to forty five thousand, three hundred twenty seven trout-carrying children, and quickly fall to the ground.
The children start to jump on top of you and pelt you with tiny fists and decaying trout.
One of them pees on your head.
Another starts pulling your hair. He only stops when he realizes that your hair has recently been peed on.
But even so, the whole experience really is not very much fun.
It seems all is lost, with death inevitable. Which may be a good thing.
But, being a trooper, and not wanting the story to end (not that it necessarily would, even if you did die) you have decided to take one last shot at survival before death arrives.
Your theory is a sound one – if you are being attacked by little kids, ‘tis best to act like them. (As the saying goes, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”) The trick, naturally, is in the application.
You quickly narrow it down to three choices.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
(Given how few of you responded, here’s another chance.)
Oh, and the walls are actually not walls, but huge towers of fire. There seems to be no way out, and walking through the fire walls doesn't seem like a good idea.
Before you can figure out exactly how you got to where you are, or why you are there, or why you are still reading this post, a loud voice booms over an invisible PA system. In its best Mortal Kombat tone, the voice simply exclaims
FIGHT!
You have nothing to fight, and seem disappointed.
Your disappointment is brief.
Behind you appear twenty-seven kindergartners. They are playing patty-cake, red rover, and duck-duck-goose. They are all wearing Yankees jerseys, except for one who is wearing a Tampa Bay Devil Rays jersey. That one is winning a disproportional number of games, not that you think it matters.
Suddenly, a child playing Red Rover slips and falls into the fiery wall -- and bounces off, unscathed. She then goes back to playing. (Naturally, having failed to break through the opposing team's chain, she now is part of that team, but that is neither here nor there.)
You stand, staring at the twenty-seven children, partially wondering where they came from, partially wondering where you came from, partially wondering why you are wondering where they came from instead of focusing more on where you came from, and entirely ignoring the fact that some voice from up on high just commanded someone, potentially you, to fight. Thankfully (perhaps), the voice reminds you:
FIGHT!
A plurality of you opted to attack the children.
You charge at the first child in the patty-cake game and drop kick him in the chest. He passes out and disappears, but other than that, the kids seem not to notice your presence.
One by one, you pick off the children, until only nine remain. They, naturally, are the ones playing Red Rover. Six on one side, three on the other.
You run as fast as you can at the two littlest girls (bastard!) on the far end of the non-gymnasium. They’re at the center of the team of six.
As you charge full speed, Sally, the little girl on the left – that is your left, not hers, although I never understood how she can be on her own left, is that not odd? – wets herself. And boy, can she pee. She’s pissing as much as that guy does in the joke Quentin Tarantino tells in Desperado.
What, you haven’t seen the movie?
Dude.
Unacceptable.
Anyway, it’s a whole lot of piss. So much piss, that you slip and stumble harmlessly toward Sally and Esmeralda (the other little girl, the one on your right and Sally’s left), only to be caught by their tiny little arms. Pussy.
Their hands separate and an irresistible force sticks you between them, reforming the chain. Well, if you are going to be coerced into playing Red Rover, at least you are on the winning team.
The team confers on whom next to send over. Across the battle field stand three kindergarteners:
Billy, a three foot, two inch kid with one hand and a hook for the other, and an eye patch over his left (your right) eye;
Benny, the kid who is wearing that Tampa Bay Devil Rays jersey and bounced off the wall of fire;
Jason G., a 6’3”, 240 pound guy who is clearly on steroids, and is probably too old to be in kindergarten any more.
WHO DO YOU SEND OVER?
By a slight margin, Billy the Hook was sent over.
Billy, replete with eye patch and hook hand, charges at you with the fervor of red ruffed lemur who had hepped up Red Bull.
For those of you who do not know what a red ruffed lemur looks like, it is highly suggested that you look at a picture of one, if for no other reason than to appreciate just how ferocious the thought of one such creature on gallons of Red Bull may appear. They certainly will weeble. They potentially will wobble. And you know, they just may fall down.
Billy does, indeed, weeble. And, having lost a good deal of depth perception due to the eye patch, he tends to wobble quite a bit. But falling down is not on the agenda, no sir! Billy spins stumbles flips falls (no, wait, he does not fall, sorry) sail slides stooks and friggles all the way from his team’s chain to yours, giggling, sniggering, and frothing all the way.
When this whirling dervish finally does reach your team’s chain, the worst thing happens. Sally, who clearly has a schoolgirl crush on Billy the pseudopirate, inexplicably – well, it is not inexplicable, not at all, given that it was just explained, but from your point of view, suffice it to say that it was so unexpected that it was for all intents and purposes inexplicable –
Sally inexplicably (see above) lets go of your hand and tackles Billy. It was probably intended a hug, but Sally fails in execution.
Billy, with Sally now draped around his waste, is moving slowly and, yes, still wobbling. However, he has one distinct advantage – you are no longer holding Sally’s hand, leaving a huge, gaping hole in your team’s Red Rover chain.
Across the abyss is Tyler, yet another five year old. Given how slowly Billy is moving -- Sally is tubby for a kindergartener – you have time to grab Tyler’s hand and reform the chain, if you act quickly. However, Tyler’s hands seem to have some gangrenous growth all over them, which only partially explains his balding purple hair and third eye. (He claims it is a bad case of the cooties, but Esmeralda – who is still holding your other hand – refuses to further break the Red Rover chain in order to give you a cooties shot.)
This leaves you with three clear choices:
1) Grab Tyler’s hand, reforming the chain and almost certainly stopping the Billy-Sally juggernaut from breaking though;
2) Let go of Esmeralda’s hand and attempt to beat up Billy, potentially saving your Red Rover team from defeat; or
3) As a pretext, hem and haw over what to do next, all the time intentionally allowing Billy to pass unscathed through the gap caused by Sally’s amour.
Amazingly, you chose #2.
You let go of Esmeralda’s hand and step forward, arms raised (well, lowered, as Billy is only 3’2”, but you get the point), ready to open up a can of whoopass.
Esmeralda is not pleased. Stopping Billy from breaking the Red Rover chain would have been easy, especially with Sally wrapped tightly around Billy’s waist. But now it is simply impossible – you have left too large a gap for Esmeralda and Tyler to close. Esmeralda jumps up, screams something in French Pig Latin (basically, it’s French, but Pig Latin-ized), and you are suddenly not very popular.
Turn to Page 7.
(Given that this is on a message board, you will note that turning to page 7 is rather difficult – after all, there is no page 7. It is suggested that you ignore this line, but in case you are highly curious, there is this parenthetical. This reference to turn to page 7 is to inform you, and to signal to your friendly neighborhood Choose Your OOT Adventure author, that the next few paragraphs can be reached via at least one other avenue. The other avenue does not have the page number labeled as to not ruin the story line, which was always a great downfall of the actual books. One could very easy read a good story about a fire-breathing dragon, get to the end, and see that two of the three choices send the reader to a page read on a previous read. That, being dumb, is best to be avoided, so this will occur only when necessary.
Thanks, and have a nice day.)
The children attack you – and they are armed with trout. The trout have no teeth. And they’re dead. (The trout, not the children.) The trout do smell rather awful, but they are slippery and the children are not doing such a good job wielding them. It could be worse.
Oh wait, it is.
Seems you have miscalculated. There were not twenty-seven children – there were 45,321, give or take six. Where did they come from? Well, that patty-cake, red rover, duck-duck-goose game? A magic summoning spell.
Where the trout came from is still unknown, and almost certainly irrelevant, although one never knows.
You, not being David Sklansky (who is said to be “surprisngly [sic] strong”) (see http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=3418712&page=1&view=c ollapsed&sb=5&o=14&vc=1 n.3), are overwhelmed by the somewhere between forty five thousand, three hundred fifteen to forty five thousand, three hundred twenty seven trout-carrying children, and quickly fall to the ground.
The children start to jump on top of you and pelt you with tiny fists and decaying trout.
One of them pees on your head.
Another starts pulling your hair. He only stops when he realizes that your hair has recently been peed on.
But even so, the whole experience really is not very much fun.
It seems all is lost, with death inevitable. Which may be a good thing.
But, being a trooper, and not wanting the story to end (not that it necessarily would, even if you did die) you have decided to take one last shot at survival before death arrives.
Your theory is a sound one – if you are being attacked by little kids, ‘tis best to act like them. (As the saying goes, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”) The trick, naturally, is in the application.
You quickly narrow it down to three choices.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
(Given how few of you responded, here’s another chance.)